January 2017 Feature

Salamanders of the Silk Road

by Christopher SmithLanternfish Press, 2016

January's pick is a surreal debut from Lanternfish Press that explores the life of a man long after his time has passed. From the back:

Prester John is a legend. He’s a relic of medieval folklore, a character from a series of garbled tales that span eras and continents like an epic game of telephone. He inhabits a world stuffed full of Cyclopes and malevolent rivers, rocs and gryphons and sciapods — and salamanders.

Now, he’s an unemployed surreal estate agent headed down to a mildew-infested beach house off the coast of Florida, where he can brood over his past — and seek a way out of his endless existence.

In Salamanders, Smith effortlessly pulls us through time and place -- from tiny villages in 300 A.D. to traffic jams in the early 2000s -- in a world which is at once comfortably familiar and altogether strange.